Star Power (play): How the Sharks might make the pieces fit together

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Sharks defenseman Brent Burns, seen here celebrating a power play goal in Game 2 of San Jose’s playoff series against the Vegas Golden Knight, will likely share the blue line with Erik Karlsson on the first power play unit this season. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

SAN JOSE — Brent Burns and Erik Karlsson on the blue line, Joe Thornton in the middle and Logan Couture and Joe Pavelski on the wings.

Yes, the Sharks’ have a little bit of star power on what figures to be their first power play unit.

Before the doors opened at SAP Center to a few thousand people for their annual FanFest, the Sharks on Sunday morning spent part of their up-tempo 50-minute practice working on special teams for the time in training camp.

As expected, the power play featured Karlsson and Burns on the back end, Thornton taking draws on the left side, Pavelski on the right side, and Couture mostly on the left wing — five players with over 1,000 combined power play points in the regular season for their NHL careers.

It sounds tantalizing, or at least good enough to improve on last season’s numbers when the Sharks finished a pedestrian 16th in the NHL in power play percentage (20.6).

“The power play’s a lot more than putting talented names on a piece of paper,” Sharks coach Pete DeBoer said. “For us, all year, five-on-five and on the power play, we have the talent. We’ve got to find a way to make that talent execute and make sure that we’re scoring in those situations.”

Burns can lined up on the right point, or even more toward the middle of the ice, free to pass to Karlsson on the left side or find a shooting lane with Couture and Pavelski near the front of the net.

Conversely, Karlsson can be the one at the top, with Burns on his left side — much like how Washington captain Alex Ovechkin sets up on the Capitals’ power play — Thornton on the right half-wall, and Couture and Pavelski down low. Both might help mitigate any issues with having two-right shot defensemen on the same unit.

“For me, personally, it’s going to be different. I’m kind of in a different spot,” Couture said. “More toward the middle of the ice, whereas last year, I was on the flank. So I’m going to have to read off of those two and work on that.”

Although the Ottawa Senators’ man advantage statistics as a team didn’t always reflect it, Karlsson has been one of the NHL’s best power play quarterbacks since he arrived in the league in 2009.
Sharks defenseman Erik Karlsson (65) has 166 career power play assists in 627 NHL games. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

Karlsson has 166 career power play assists in 627 NHL games, with 113 coming in the last five seasons. The only players to have more assists on the man-advantage since the start of the 2013 season are Washington’s Nicklas Backstrom (141) and Philadelphia’s Claude Giroux (127).

Although Karlsson never had a player quite like Burns by his side on Senators power plays, he did play the point with Oliver Ekman-Larsson on Team Sweden at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey.

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“I think it’s going to be fairly easy for me to figure out their patterns here quickly, and they obviously have chemistry from before,” Karlsson said. “So it’s more for me just to figure out what they like to do and how they run things.”

The Sharks have the day off Monday and the players that were on the top unit Sunday will likely not travel to Calgary for Tuesday’s game. Potentially, the only time they will get to play together as a unit in a preseason game is Thursday when the Sharks host the Flames.

“It’s fairly standard stuff that you’ve been around long enough to know what you need to do to be successful,” Karlsson said. “For me, it’s more about memorizing everything and trying to figure out patterns for certain guys and make it as natural as possible, so I don’t have to overthink things all the time.”

▪ As of Sunday afternoon, there was not an official count on how many people attended FanFest, but crowds looked larger than they had been in recent years with autograph seekers standing in lines as long as 100 feet in the concourse area.

Fans also had a chance to get their picture taken inside the Sharks’ head on the ice surface. Others took shots on a target on a net.

Thornton and others helped pour beer in the tailgate area set up on Autumn St. on the arena’s east side. On a stage on the arena floor, Burns and Brenden Dillon were shown animals from the Happy Hollow Zoo and Karlsson and Marc-Edouard Vlasic petted dogs brought by the South Bay chapter of Canine Companions, a non-profit organization provides trained assistance dogs to people with disabilities.

Several Sharks coaches and alumni also took part in a “Legends Game” on Sunday evening.

▪ The Sharks reduced their training camp down to 28 players Sunday, sending 15 players to the Barracuda and forward Jake McGrew back to Spokane of the Western Hockey League.

Curtis Pashelka is the San Jose Sharks reporter for the Bay Area News Group. Prior to covering the Sharks, Curtis served as the high school sports editor for the East Bay. He also worked as a general assignment reporter covering motorsports, golf and college basketball, and as a backup writer on the A's, Giants and Warriors. He started at the organization in 2000 and spent close to eight years covering high school sports.